"Freedom is our goal!" roared commander Pepe San Roman to the men assembled before him 48 years ago this week. "Cuba is our cause! God is on our side! On to victory!"

Fifteen hundred men crowded before San Roman at their Guatemalan training camps that day. The next day they'd embark for a port in Nicaragua, the following day for a landing site in Cuba named Bahia De Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). Their outfit was known as Brigada 2506, and at their commander's address the men (and boys, some as young as 16) erupted

A scene of total bedlam unfolded. Hats flew. Men hugged. Men sang and cheered. Men wept. The hour of liberation was nigh -- and these men (all volunteers) were putting their lives on the line to see their dream fulfilled. Their dream was a Cuba free from the Soviet barbarism that tortured it, free from firing squads, torture chambers and the teeming Castroite Gulag.

The Brigada included men from every social strata and race in Cuba -- from sugar cane planters to sugar cane cutters, from aristocrats to their chauffeurs. But mostly, the folks in between, as befit a nation with a larger middle class than most of Europe.

"They fought like Tigers," wrote a CIA officer who helped train these Cuban freedom-fighters. "But their fight was doomed before the first man hit the beach."

The most true statement in the article. I personally spoke to the CIA agent who told Washington weeks ahead of the attack that, “they know they are coming and will be waiting for them at the beach”, but Washington just kept moving forward.

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